HP's Android-based Slate 7: CEO Meg Whitman said HP is in the midst of a transition from PCs to tablets.
CNET

Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman may have stated the obvious when she said today that HP is transferring its attention to tablets.

"We're shifting resources from PCs to tablets," she said during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference.

"The market moved very fast to tablets and smartphones, and we've got to now manage that transition."

She continued. "And it's not that HP didn't try to manage that transition -- they did with the acquisition of Palm. But as you know under the previous [management] that took a little detour to nowhere."

She also talked about quality, not a trivial issue for some HP products. "Quality was not an area of focus. Quality drives enormous cost. If you have warranty or support problems...the backend cost of quality is enormous. Those are the kinds of things we're going after that were frankly untouched," she said.

And, not surprisingly, she mentioned innovation, which HP likes to say is part of its DNA. "Innovation is not dead at this company. So, what I did is I increased RD spending...we have to get these products that are close to market to market fast," she said.

About the author

Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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